Keeping cats within an apartment or house can be a great joy for many individuals. However, confining these animals indoors raises the problem of dealing with their feces and urine. Cats will generally defecate within a litter box but will then scratch the litter in the box discharging litter from the box in the general area of the box. When urinating, cats will stand within the box near the edge of the litter box and urinate onto the walls and carpets surrounding the box. These practices can lead to unsightly stains and unsanitary, foul smelling conditions in the house or apartment when not promptly cleaned up. It would be a benefit, therefore, to have a device which would prevent the cats from urinating on the building walls and carpets. It would be a further benefit if the device was lightweight and easy to clean.
The following patents are illustrative of prior attempts to alleviate these problems.
______________________________________ U.S. Pat. No. Inventor ______________________________________ 5,140,948 Roberts 5,092,277 Baillie et al. 5,012,765 Naso et al. 4,766,845 Bavas 4,648,160 Feitelson 3,085,550 Crawford ______________________________________
Roberts, issued Aug. 25, 1992, discloses an enclosure defining a litter box. The enclosure includes a base portion, and a removable upper portion mounted to the base portion. A door to the upper portion includes a signal generating switch to effect actuation of a blower motor positioned coaxially within an exhaust conduit directed through the upper portion.
Baillie et al., issued Mar. 3, 1992, discloses an enclosed housing having a cat liter box within its bottom confines. An opening is provided in the top surface of the housing through which the cat climbs onto a lower, intermediate surface level. A partition is provided around which the cat is forced to walk in order to gain entry to the litter box by climbing down through a second opening. The lower, intermediate surface level is an open-grid construction, so that when the cat reverses its path to leave the litter box, any litter trapped on its paws falls, by gravity, back into the box as the cat walls around the partition.
Naso et al., issued May 7, 1991, discloses a waste collection and screening device having two litter pans in opposed orientation, an opened face of a first litter pan in facing arrangement with an open face of the second litter pan with a screen member interposed between the opposing litter pans.
Bavas, issued Aug. 30, 1988, discloses a cat litter pan system consisting of a permanent extruded plastic litter receptacle suitable for receiving therein a disposable litter tray and a two component cover section that matingly engages the plastic receptacle wherein the disposable litter tray is positioned adjacently to the cover section and is easily removed, disposed of, and replaced with a new one.
Feitelson, issued Oct. 22, 1985, discloses a disposable cat litter box including a horizontally extending bottom, preferably rectangular, and attached along the ends to upwardly extending end walls and side walls which may be further folded to provide a top cover of one-half the area of the horizontally extending bottom.
Crawford, issued Apr. 16, 1963, discloses a cat sanitary container and enclosure including a housing having a closed top; a dosed bottom; sidewalls connecting the top and bottom, one upright side of the housing is open; a lip, carried by and projecting inward from the wall opposite the open side and spaced from the bottom; and a tray receivable in the bottom of the housing having an upstanding side with its upper portion engageable between the lip and the wall opposite the open side.
None of these attempts have satisfactorily solved the problems described above.